


A Statue for a Princess

by Cerch



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Fate & Destiny, M/M, Royal Merlin, Spirits
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-28
Updated: 2017-10-28
Packaged: 2019-01-25 18:03:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,793
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12537968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cerch/pseuds/Cerch
Summary: Inside the crypts of Camelot Prince Arthur comes across Merlin, who becomes something rather like a friend.(With some additional Pendragon sibling feels.)





	A Statue for a Princess

**Author's Note:**

> Hiiiii Merlin fandom, it's been awhile!
> 
> That being said I actually wrote this almost three years ago I think, but despite the fact that I really liked it I never got around posting it. However, I amazingly still quite like it, and since it's halloween and all I decided to dust it off and post it. I hope you'll enjoy it!

The crypts under Camelot are a strange labyrinth, a web of endless twists and turns deep underground, the corridors surrounded by ornamental coffins of stone and statues that stare hauntedly into their own graves. The royal ones are the grandest and the saddest: the statue of his own mother has hidden her face in her hands as if weeping. Next to her grave, twenty two years old, is a new grave, the stone of the tomb bright and dustless. Arthur had used to wish that he could have introduced Morgana to his mother. He had liked to think they would have gotten along. Now their cold bodies will lie next to each other for eternity.

Uther and Queen Consort Vivienne try to commission a statue for Morgana, one made after the anguished images of old, but Arthur refuses, reasoning, threatening, yelling - and finally crying though he will never admit that to anyone – and they cave, Uther probably because he can’t stand watching Arthur disgracing himself any longer. So Arthur orders a statue to be made in the image of Morgana, looking fierce and holding a sword, her face gleeful and infuriating as ever in life. The artist doesn't quite manage it but that's all right; she looks victorious instead and Arthur laughs until he weeps over the bitter irony of it. It is the last time he cries – a well that had before seemed bottomless dries inside him and he is not sure if it will ever have tears for anyone else.

He goes down sometimes, wrapped in a heavy cloak against the damp cold and torch in his hand, and just sits in the tomb of his family, alone with his mother and sister. He will not be buried here, he thinks with longing, but with his own wife and children, apart from his heir who again will be buried in his own chamber. He could order otherwise when he becomes the king.

It takes him awhile to notice that more often than not a shadow trails after him in the passages. Sometimes he spies a flash of golden embroidery at the door of the tomb while he sits in silence.

That day, there is no trace of that presence behind him. Instead, when he steps into the tomb a young man is sitting on Morgana's grave, studying her statue intently, and Arthur freezes to the doorway in shock. The man is maybe some years older than he is, though he has never been good at guessing anyone’s age, and he is dressed in strange but elegant black robe decorated with gold. His hood is down, revealing messy black hair and the sharp lines of a face, pale even in the yellow torchlight.

"I like it," the man says, not moving his eyes away from the statue. "She looks like a warrior."

Arthur startles, almost dropping the torch before swinging it to point at the intruder like a sword. He wishes he had a proper weapon.

The man lifts his hands up, eyes wide. "Calm down, I'm not doing any harm!" His voice is a bit alarmed – but more something else that Arthur can't quite put his finger on. Exasperated? Absurd. He doesn't lower the torch and lifts his jaw enough to be able to stare down on the man regally.

"Who are you?" Arthur asks.

"Oh. Yes," the man says and looks almost disappointed. "I'm Merlin."

The name sounds distantly familiar, but the memory of it is distorted like a dream. "Prince Arthur," he says gruffly and lets the torch fall for the smallest fraction.

Merlin smiles widely, his cheeks dimpling in an angelic manner of young boys, and a strange feeling settles in Arthur's stomach. Merlin stands up from Morgana's grave – surely sitting on a royal grave has to be some kind of capital offence – and waves Arthur to put the torch aside. Its flame flickers a bit, like it’s considering going out and Arthur frowns at it. From the corner of his eye he spies Merlin frowning as well, but when he lifts the torch to the holder on the wall the flame is bright again and Merlin looks like a cheerful child – who would probably make half of the courtly ladies swoon while the other half would pinch his cheeks and ruffle his hair, but a child all the same.

"Are you following me?"

Merlin rolls his eyes, yet his grin stays in place. "I was here before you. Therefore I should ask you if you are following me." He narrows his eyes in mock-thoughtfulness. “Are you?”

Arthur stares at him, incredulous and annoyed. "Don't play games with me. I have seen you."

Merlin makes a noncommittal noise and studies the doorway behind Arthur. "Have you really?"

Arthur thinks of the quick flashes of gold just outside his vision and can't really say yes.

"That doesn't even matter!" he snaps. "Who are you and what are you doing here?"

"I told you who I am, and obviously I was watching the statue – it is quite unique down here, you know. And maybe I also wanted to talk to you, but clearly I should have known better than to hope for you to be polite and nice. It just doesn't seem to work that way."

Merlin says this all like it makes perfect sense: like he actually expects Arthur to understand what he is blabbering about and even agree with him. Arthur shakes his head slowly. "You are some sort of madman, aren't you?"

"What? No!" Merlin huffs, crossing his hands. "I will have you know that I am extremely sane, all things considered."

"All things considered?" Arthur asks, and then thinks better of it, shaking his head. "No. I actually don't want to know." He grabs the torch. "I better not catch you here again," he declares and marches out, decidedly not hearing how Merlin shouts "Come back, you prat!" after him. What he does wonder later though, is why Merlin didn't seem to be carrying any light and if he has left Merlin to wander in the dark passages alone and lost.

 

xxx

 

He goes back next morning, early before the sun has had chance to banish the mist that covers the ground. It's thicker than usual – his old nanny would have said that the dead had been walking in the night, but he has long since stopped believing in the wild tales she told him. He wraps himself tighter into his cloak and hurries his steps. He wants make up for the time he lost with Merlin yesterday, to spend time in peace with his mother and sister, and hopes very pointedly that Merlin has disappeared back to whatever hole he crawled out from.

The tomb is empty and Arthur sighs, sits against the wall. He whispers a greeting to Morgana, a couple of words, no more, and falls silent. He is at peace here, at least more so than under his father's harsh gaze, and rues the irony in that. After endless moments he rises, touches the shoulder of Morgana's statue, and wishes for a hug. Nobody apart from Morgana has ever given him one.

He walks away deep in thought and almost jumps out of his skin when a shadow steps out of a doorway in front of him. He makes a grab for his sword that isn't there, not when he is down there, and then recognises Merlin.

"What the hell?" he snaps, irritated.

"Sorry," Merlin says brightly. "I didn't mean to scare you."

"You couldn't scare a newborn baby even if you tried," Arthur says with as much disdain as he can muster. "And I don't get scared."

"Don’t be stupid," Merlin says, but there is a strange shadow hovering over his eyes. "Fear keeps you alive. Foolish boys, foolish deaths, lives thrown away for nothing."

For a heartbeat his gleaming eyes stare into Arthur's, and then he shrinks away, leans against the wall.

"You lost someone," Arthur says before his mind quite catches up to his mouth. It must be why Merlin comes down here.

"So did you. But I lost many." Merlin's voice is hoarse and for a moment he looks broken and lost, like essential pieces of him have disappeared and left him to become something less than before.

Arthur shakes his head to clear it and withdraws the hand that has unconsciously reached out to offer something, maybe support, maybe consolation, maybe something else entirely.

"I'm sorry," he says.

Merlin's face twitches and he fidgets, though the agony doesn't leave his eyes. "It's alright," he says and it isn’t; but Arthur understands the wish to run away from one's demons. "I should get going," he says, feeling more awkward than ever.

"Of course," Merlin says. When Arthur glances over his shoulder he has disappeared back into the darkness.

 

xxx

 

Arthur isn't even surprised to see Merlin sitting on Morgana's grave, his robe pushed out of the way to reveal long legs in leather boots that are hugging his calves and laced like a woman’s shoes. The design is foreign, but Arthur has long since figured that Merlin cannot have been born in Camelot, not with his robes and the almost unnoticeable strange lilt in his speech.

Merlin smiles at him and Arthur nods in return and somehow his legs carry him to sit on the grave next to Merlin. It's not like Morgana would have minded, would rather have called Arthur silly and uptight for refusing.

"Why don't you tell me about your day?" Merlin asks. "I'm sure they would like to hear as well." He gestures at the statues, not the graves.

Arthur chuckles. "Morgana would call me a bore."

"I think that's how sisters are. But they care anyway. And mothers always want to know everything."

Arthur shrugs. "I wouldn't really know."

Merlin's hand brushes across his shoulders, touch cool and feather light. Arthur doesn't look at him, stares at the floor.

"But I suppose it's my duty to entertain you at least."

"Absolutely." Merlin's hand retreats, but when Arthur looks at him he is rewarded with a brilliant smile.

He starts haltingly – it's surprisingly hard, to talk about meaningless, mundane things, to talk about himself instead of Camelot – but after a while he finds the flow of the words and discovers himself talking to Merlin much more freely than he meant to. He doesn't truly talk about feelings or any such, but he thinks his words reveal some of them anyway; his frustration with his father and his policies, his ever present feeling of not quite measuring up to some invisible standard. Merlin just listens intently, like he cares, and that awakens something warm in Arthur's chest.

He halts when he realises that the light in the tomb is dying out. He curses and springs to his feet, turning just in time to see how his torch burns out.

He curses again.

"It's alright," Merlin says somewhere close to his left ear. "I know the way."

"In total darkness?" Arthur asks incredulously. "And why don't you have any light with you in the first place?"

Arthur can practically feel Merlin’s shrug. "I don't need it."

"Great. You are an idiot, and you are going to get us lost and killed." He might be being a tad unreasonable, seeing as Merlin must have managed to navigate the crypts somehow, but he is slightly worried and annoyed at himself for being so careless, so Merlin gets to bear the brunt of it.

"Arthur," Merlin says from so close that they must be almost touching. "Trust me."

Bizarrely Arthur does. So when Merlin grabs his hand and slots his ice cold fingers through Arthur's, tugging him forward Arthur doesn't resist but lets Merlin lead him.

Arthur has never known darkness like this, a total, complete absence of light. His eyes strain to catch even a hint of shape of movement but there is nothing. He stumbles a bit, scrapes his hand against the wall. Surely they're lost. He hopes his father doesn't let his cousin Morgause to inherit the throne if he dies here, and chuckles with the slightest bit of hysteria.

"Just ten paces or so," Merlin says, urging him to his feet.

"You're leading me to my death."

Merlin is somewhat right. It's not exactly ten paces but more like nine and half, but Arthur does indeed almost die when the sunlight hits him in the face.

Merlin stands in the doorway with Arthur, peering out curiously like a cat contemplating whether it should brave the outside world or not.

"Come on, then," Arthur says. "I'll walk you home. As a thank you."

"A thank you?" Merlin lifts one eyebrow sceptically.

Arthur tries to give him a gentle shove, but Merlin ducks backwards and dodges easily.

"Shut up, Merlin."

"Thanks, really," Merlin says awkwardly from behind him and Arthur turns to look at him as he shuffles his feet nervously, hands hidden behind his back. "For the thank you. But I can't. I mean–  I still have somewhere to visit here."

It's an excuse, a half-truth or a lie, Arthur doesn't know which. Doesn't particularly care. There is no sting, no bitter taste in his mouth when he says "I see", because he does, and he doesn't care. His traitorous mouth adds "You should buy gloves; your fingers are like ice. And a light. Just because you can find your way in the dark doesn't mean you should. It's dangerous." He claps his hand to his mouth and pretends to yawn to make the movement look natural.

Merlin nods slowly and lifts his hand to examine his long fingers. "I suppose," he says doubtfully.

Next time Arthur is in town he buys a new pair of gloves because his old ones are rather worn. It occurs to him he should give them away to someone who needs them. Like Merlin. Not Merlin specifically.

 

xxx

 

Arthur rests his hand against the doors of the crypt and takes in deep breaths. In and out. Disappointment, Uther had said. Arthur squeezes his eyes tightly shut, hoping to shut out the voice. In and out. There are steps somewhere in the yard behind him and he opens the doors, slips in. He doesn't want to meet anyone, not Guinevere and her kind pity, not a random wide eyed servant, least of all his father, though thinking that his father would come searching for him is nothing but childish fancy and he scorns at himself for it.

He lights a lantern, takes a few reluctant steps towards the familiar passage but finds that he doesn't quite want to face Morgana or his mother either. Morgana would have yelled at him for not standing up to Uther and not throwing his unreasonableness back to his face, but Arthur has never been one for such displays. The knife of longing is rusty and blunted, and its turn is all the more painful for it. The path he takes leads to the oldest graves and tombs, built in the time before Pendragons had conquered the lands. Pagan kings, his father calls them, barbarians.

No large statues here, just rows of bones on the wall, with small, faded symbols carved to the stone to mark them. There are some burial chambers as well, for their highest and mightiest, but they have long since been sealed shut. They contain secrets and memories of times past that are better left to be forgotten, or that’s what Arthur has learned. Right now everything feels unreal, uncertain, like his whole life could have been based on a tangle of lies without him ever noticing. He did the right thing. His father is wrong.

He doesn't take any turns, not that seems to be that many of those in these parts of the crypts anyway, and lets his mind sink away from the present to summer days of his childhood where he played with Morgana and wasn't afraid of the world because he didn't understand that it was something to be afraid of. Oh, he is brave and he will walk back, face his father and himself, but he needs a moment of peace first. This young Morgana of his memories is sweet if wilful, and the Arthur is innocent and bright, and the memory is warm and comforting.

He is so deep inside his own mind that he doesn't even notice when the rows of bones on the wall stop or how the passage turns rougher until he stumbles over a loose stone and opens his eyes to the outside. There isn't much to see, only unpolished stone, but he had somehow expected the passages to end with the bones. He is not here for the bones, though, and after a moment of puzzlement he continues on for what does he care? Nothing.

The passage turns narrower, and for a moment Arthur thinks he spies the end, but as he walks closer he sees that he path only makes a sharp turn to the right. The ground starts sloping downwards and he contemplates turning back, but he is a bit curious, just enough distracted, so he shrugs and keeps going.

First he thinks he is imagining it. His eyes have decided to play tricks on him, bored in the limited light of the lantern. But already after a couple of steps he knows that it's getting stronger, that it's real. It's a faint blue glow on the rocks, coming from a hidden source ahead, beautiful if not for its strangeness that is sending cold shivers down Arthur's back.

His fingers curl around the hilt of the knife he has in his belt – he had forgotten to take it off, committing a great offence against the dead, but despite the brief flash of guilt he find himself glad for his lapse.

The air in his mouth tastes stale.

He inches forwards, imagining he is hunting; each movement is measured, precise and most of all silent. He doesn't want to alert the prey – or the predator.

There is a ball of light floating maybe a foot above the ground, spreading the blue-silvery light around it. A shadow is crouched next to it, back turned to Arthur.

A sorcerer. He can't believe it – they are all long dead, turned to ink on the pages of dusty tomes, together with their pagan rites and druid kings.

His body is frozen like by an enchantment, though one cast by his own mind; briefly he wonders if he should flee, if attack, but he has too much honour to shove a knife to a man’s back. And to give up his honour would mean giving up himself, he has already decided that. So he clears his throat, more awkwardly than he would like, and the figure jumps like struck by lightning.

Arthur recognises his profile even before Merlin breathes out a startled: "Arthur!"

Maybe he should be afraid, but he isn't; the thought of being afraid of Merlin is ludicrous. Merlin has been Arthur's one true source of consolation lately and he has had numerous chances to hurt Arthur. Maybe Arthur just wants to trust him too much and his foolishness will become his downfall, but he sheathes his dagger all the same and is glad to see the alarm on Merlin's face ease.

"You're a sorcerer," he finally says.

Merlin visibly squirms.

"Yes?" he says like he isn't quite sure. "Except not exactly, it's rather complicated and, uh. Arthur -" He breaks off and runs his fingers through his hair, leaving it sticking up to all directions. "Heck, I wish they should have given me instructions for this," he mutters under his breath, but Arthur hears him anyway.

"What?"

Merlin glances at him strangely, eyes narrowing momentarily.

"Look around you. What do you see?"

It's a strange question – Arthur sees stone. Though Merlin seems to be standing on a ledge, maybe, and behind him opens some kind of vast chamber. Cautiously he moves closer, and Merlin gives him a small nod, before he lifts his hand and the ball of light floats upwards and away from them, to the darkness ahead. It stops some twenty paces away, and then starts pulsating, getting brighter with every pulse. The moving light is hypnotic and first Arthur can't tear his eyes away from it, but Merlin nudges him slightly and he looks to the darkness that is no longer dark.

The walls are rough stone, same as everywhere else, though the space is huge. He looks down. He hears a gasp like through a fog – it takes him a moment to understand it has left his own lips. When he tries to take a step back his legs refuse to obey.

Bones, piles upon piles of old, yellowish bones that are scattered below them without even an illusion of order. He can make out skulls, too small to belong to anyone else than babies and few so large they must have belonged to giants. Hundreds and hundreds of humans, people, robbed of their dignity in death.

"Who?" Arthur whispers without knowing what he is exactly asking about. Who did this? Who are these people? Who knows about this? Who are you?

Merlin cold fingers dig into his wrist with an almost painful strength. "These are the ones I lost."

"That's – " he breaks off, looks at Merlin and his wide, intense eyes. The blue light casts strange shadows to his sharp bones. "Impossible," he whispers and knows he is wrong.

"They are the druids, the witches, the every magical being who didn't manage to escape when the Pendargons came," Merlin says, his words intense and burning on Arthur's skin. "They are the warriors, the children, the healers. My people, whom I failed to protect."

There is only one thing Merlin can be talking about: the first purge, conducted by Maglocunus Pendragon almost two hundred years ago. What Merlin is saying – maybe Morgana's death has driven Arthur mad and this is a delusion born from demonic whispers. And who is Merlin in all this? Despite everything Arthur wishes for him to be real.

"Who are you?" he whispers. "An immortal sorcerer from a time of legend?"

Merlin winces like struck.

"No. I am – I was – the last king of family Emrys. But Arthur, no, I'm not immortal." He stutters to halt and bring his hand to Arthur's cheek carefully, like soothing a skittish animal. Arthur brings his own hand to cover Merlin's and Merlin closes his eyes, a pained smile on his lips. "I'm not alive."

"What?" Arthur says, voice loud and unnaturally high pitched. "Of course you are, I'm touching you, you're right here –" Merlin hand is so very cold – like death, whispers a chorus of voices in the back of his head, unwelcome. Merlin's lips are red and full, his eyes gleaming, _alive,_ and Arthur pulls Merlin close and kisses him, desperate for something, anything, but Merlin's lips are soft and cold. Arthur steps back.

"No," he says. To everything.

A tear runs down Merlin's cheek, a perfect deception of humanity. "I'm sorry," Merlin says, and his voice cracks like under real sorrow.

Arthur turns away, and grasps his hand around his dagger. "What do you – is this some sort of revenge?" He sounds like his heart is breaking with every word and he hates himself for it fiercely. He straightens his back, wipes his face blank and locks it all away, something he has been trained to do since he was a child. It's harder than it should be, especially when Merlin speaks: "No, it's not like that, I would never, Arthur, please," words tumbling over each other, familiar, so very Merlin.

He faces Merlin, back in his full armour, doesn't waver in front of Merlin's apparent fragility. "Explain. Everything," he snaps.

"You woke me. That’s all I can explain."

He feels like a spring stretched to the point of snapping. "How can that be all?" he all but shouts, and Merlin flinches.

"I don't know!" Merlin sounds angry. It is not fair; Arthur is the only one who has the right to be angry. This time it's Merlin who looks away. "I don't know, alright. I died – and then I woke up knowing I was dead but waiting for something to happen. You visited your mother's grave so seldom –" And that is so not fair, Merlin has no right to say that, none at all. "But then your sister died and you started to come here more often and it felt like I was being pulled to you. It doesn't make any sense to me either!"

Definitely angry now, but somehow finding his own confusion reflected from Merlin makes Arthur's mind ease, if only a little.

"I,” he says and stops to take a fortifying breath, “I think we should talk about this later. I don't think either of us is thinking rationally right now."

Merlin meets his eyes and nods tersely. "Alright," he says and Arthur turns to go.

He has already disappeared into the passage when Merlin speaks after him. "You better come back."

Arthur doesn't answer, but he has every intention to return, for his sanity alone if nothing else. Or maybe for his insanity. The line between the two seems to have washed away.

 

xxx

 

It takes Arthur two days to dig his courage up from some dark pit inside his stomach and to return. Despite the many hours he has spent as a prisoner of his own thoughts, far too distracted from his duties, he has gained no measure of understanding about anything.

The air is damp and dirty on his tongue – the lashing rain outside showing its mightiness even underground and the flame of the candle in the lantern seems pale and weak. Arthur hesitates to take a direction, but after a moment lets his legs carry him to the direction of his mother's and Morgana's tomb. Where he first met Merlin. Death upon death, living and dying and living again. It might have been better for his sanity to never return, and he cannot quite explain why he did.

He expects this walk to be one of those that take forever, the anxiety of waiting stretching and stretching, courting madness, but instead he feels like it only takes him a blink to reach the door of the tomb.

Merlin is sitting on Morgana's grave, and his hands are busy playing with his blue light, now as small as an apple, the movement strangely hypnotising. Merlin has long fingers, graceful and enticing, and Arthur remembers them against his skin, cold yet oddly pleasant. Without thought he strides up to Merlin who looks up to him surprised, and grabs one of his hands in his.

"Arthur?" Merlin asks quietly, but Arthur has no answer for him.

"I don't know," he says, puts his lantern down, other hand still tightly around Merlin's. "I don't know what this is, or what this means. But I think you could be –" He barely has time to swallow down the "special" that threatens to tip off from his tongue. "Interesting." That at least.

Merlin stares at him like he is seeing something he hasn't quite caught before, uncomfortably earnest. Though his hand feels like he has ice in his veins it's very nearly impossible to believe he is not alive.

Then he chuckles. "I suspect we could both be rather brilliant."

His free hand rises to Arthur's shoulder, the magical light suddenly gone. Arthur presses forwards against the touch and balances himself by moving his leg forward to where it gently brushes against Merlin's.

It's like waiting for a thunderstorm, everything heavy and alive, waiting to break free. Merlin pulls him down, steady and firm, which is probably the only thing stopping Arthur from falling apart. The touch of their lips feels partly like coming home, partly like the first strike of lightning. He could drown himself to Merlin. It's hard to find way through Merlin's complicated clothes to his skin but Arthur manages, pulls Merlin to him, his nails digging into Merlin's skin, while Merlin tugs him closer one hand in his hair and one at the front of his shirt.

His knee scrapes against a sharp edge and he draws back, his breath stolen.

"Not here!" he whispers furiously. His cheeks are burning.

Merlin looks confused for a second before a slow smile unfurls on his lips. "I believe you should show me your bedchambers, my lord."

Arthur is about to ask whether Merlin even can leave the crypts, but Merlin's eyes burn with strange light, and they are gone, his question answered.

 

xxx

 

In a tomb there is a statue built in the image of a princess. She looks like she is smirking.


End file.
